Ashton Under Hill First School

Shaping Bright Futures Together


Week Beginning 26th September 2022

We have had a very productive time in our last week of September, how fast this month has whizzed by!

In maths this week we have been rounding to the nearest 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 and 100,000 - using 6 digit numbers. It has been quite tricky at times but we have learnt some simple rules to help us be more successful. We played a great game to consolidate our learning, which got very competitive.

In English with Mrs Tulley we wrote our own stories in the style of a Cinderella fairy tale, focussing on using words with prefixes, modal verbs and making sure that we linked our sentences and paragraphs together to make them flow well. With Mrs Thompson the children had a debate where they took on different roles to discuss where Ancient Egyptian artefacts should be stored. The different groups they represented were: the Egyptian Government, world historians, archaeologists and Ancient Egyptian descendants. They came up with some excellent arguments to persuade their viewpoint.  The descendance were the overall winners! Earlier in the week we played charades using prefix words where the children had to guess which word was being acted out. It was a lovely Learning Outside of the Classroom opportunity.

For our topic lesson, in an archaeological role play we tried to work out what an artefact (which they discovered in an ancient tomb) could tell us about every day life. They worked in small groups to decide where in the desert the tomb was located, they knew it was between Thebes and Esna. Once located, the children, equipped with their maps and torches and blind folds (to simulate darkness), followed their guide into the tomb. After a short time they had to crawl as the entrance was very narrow. When they were inside they had to piece together the picture of the artefact and then study the image listing, what it showed, what this told us and write any questions they were unsure of. It was very memorable watching them crawling up the corridor, working together to guide themselves in the tomb!!

On Friday we started to work on our drawing skills using pencil to create a portrait of an Ancient Egyptian face using a secondary source of information from the British Museum for inspiration. The children worked carefully to recreate the proportions of the facial features and will use a charcoal pencil next week, adding in shading to enhance their drawing. Check the gallery for some examples.